Book Review: "Fringe: The Burning Man" (by Christa Faust)

Christa Faust brings us the second in a trilogy of prequels to the hit TV show “Fringe.” While the previous one, "The Zodiac Paradox", followed Walter Bishop in his youth, "The Burning Man" follows the shows lead character Olivia Dunham as she learns to cope with the loss of her parents and the unusual Fringe events that seem to follow her.

In the TV show, Olivia Dunham was a quiet, serious person who took her responsibilities as both an FBI agent and a member of the Fringe Division seriously. She has a photographic memory and she’s extremely deadly with a gun, being one of the best marksmen the FBI has ever seen. In Burning Man, we get to see just how she becomes this person through tragedies and the people she meets.

From the very start of the book, Olivia’s life is turned upside down by the death of her father overseas in the army, while she’s taking part in the Cortexiphan trials. This leads to a slightly overly dramatic scene where Olivia needs to come to terms with this death along with her pregnant mother.

The book then moves forward a few years and we’re introduced to her abusive step father, Randall, who couldn’t be more of a stereotype if he tried; alcoholic, thinning hair, lack of intelligence and a general jealous attitude are all that makes up the character of Randall.

More interesting is Tony; a police officer who befriends Randall with the promise of making him rich if he helps steal from a local drug dealer. Naturally, things go wrong. Before leaving for a night of robbery, Randall breaks his wife’s nose and leaves her bloodied in Olivia’s arms. In his drunken, violent state he forgets his gun which leads to Olivia shooting him with it when he and Tony turn up to fetch it.

This leads to Olivia’s first major use of her powers. She transports Tony, who tries to wrestle the gun from her, to another dimension. She also melts Tony’s arm off. He kinda had it coming.

Both Tony and Randall are carted off to hospital while the Dunham home burns to the ground. And things only get worse. Olivia and her sister, Rachel, lose their mother not long after Randall is put in jail and Tony is sent to a mental asylum. Threatened with being put into foster care, the Dunhams are saved by a scholarship to a school in Boston. That’s awful convenient, right? Naturally, it’s run by the slightly shady corporation Massive Dynamics who are more interested in monitoring Olivia’s powers than making sure she gets an education.

The book follows Olivia as she gets on with her school life. She falls for a shy boy who gets bullied a lot, she joins after school clubs, and she looks after her sister. Meanwhile, one armed Tony plans his revenge, believing God wants him to kill Olivia. Because he so crazy. He’s not organic crazy; Olivia’s powers kind of screwed him up a bit. It’s pretty interesting to see how they can sort of sense each other and feel each other’s emotions.

We get some insight into Massive Dynamics and their motives in this book, which is never a bad thing. The story overall manages to keep a balance between the shows mythology and its own story, so if you’re not familiar with the backgrounds or if you’re forgetful, it’s not essential that you know everything to enjoy the book.

The book is pretty great, even if I’m a little biased towards anything Fringe related. The writing is strong as Faust writes some good teenage angst. There are some truly melodramatic bits from the teenage characters that can make you shudder and think “Yeah, I might have reacted that way, too.”

One-armed Tony makes a pretty decent villain, if a little generic for this franchise. He doesn’t have exploding ears or melting hair or anything that makes him some special Fringe event but Faust makes him pretty darn menacing, which is the most important part.

Again, there are issues with the Fringe lore but nothing that ruins the book. The only real issue is that Olivia doesn’t remember having powers when she’s older and you’d think she’d remember a psychopath taking an interest in her. But, that can be explained away pretty easily. Massive Dynamic is known for meddling with memories and brains, sometimes, just for fun. Plus, Cortexiphan is a strange thing. A lot of possibilities here that could explain the issue.

Overall, this book is actually a lot better than the previous one. Faust’s pacing seems more fluid and she has a better grasp on Olivia than she had on Walter. I can’t wait to see how she handle’s one of the most popular characters of the show, Peter Bishop, in the next book.

The pacing is actually one of the best parts of the book; it never lets up and takes you from plot point to plot point without getting buried in unnecessary descriptions and monologues. It does explore Olivia’s mental state and the more mundane side of her life but it never outstays its welcome; in fact, it fleshes out the character quite nicely.

As with the last one, I can’t recommend this book enough. Even without knowledge of the series, it’s a great read despite some stereotypes and clichés here and there.

Buy "Fringe: The Burning Man" on the Titan Books website! Did you enjoy the review? Read the book? Planning to? Let us know in the comments!